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Insurance companies would raise a ruckus because they set their prices based on customers enrolling before April. The Obama administration doesn’t want to push the successful enrollment stories until any later than they have to. And neither want to give procrastinators another reason to wait to sign up.

“Here’s the irony of ironies: The insurance industry is ready for Obamacare on Jan. 1. Obamacare is not ready for Obamacare on Jan. 1,” said Robert Laszewski, an insurance industry consultant with Health Policy and Strategy Associates.

In fact, insurance companies have a lot to lose from a delay. They need to start racking up paying customers as early as possible in 2014 so they can set rates for 2015.

The calls for delay come amid the flawed rollout of HealthCare.gov, which some Democrats — and many Republicans — say could prevent people from learning about the law and enrolling by the time they face the mandate’s fines.

“Delaying the individual mandate or extending the enrollment period past March 31 could have a destabilizing effect on the insurance markets,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for industry trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans. The solid deadline is “essential” to balancing out Obamacare’s requirement that insurers accept all applicants, he said.

During the open enrollment period, someone could get sick or injured and apply for insurance literally on the way to the hospital — and the insurer will still have to accept him or her. That’s a risk insurers are accepting in January, February and March of 2014. Add another month of that kind of risk and it’s going to significantly add to insurers’ costs, they say. Although others argue that the procrastinators are more likely to be young and healthy than sick and costly.

Potentially more important for insurance companies is that they will have to submit their 2015 rates in the spring of 2014. The more claims data they have from 2014, the better they can estimate their 2015 costs. Actuaries are notoriously conservative and could raise rates in 2015 if there are too many unknowns.

The Obama administration has said it’s far too early to consider delaying the mandate or the open enrollment period.

“I don’t think that that really is the question right now,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on CNN this week when asked about delaying the individual mandate. “The issue is will people be able to sign up for affordable health care in the six months’ open enrollment period? And I think the answer is absolutely yes.”

If there is a delay, no one expects it to be announced until well into 2014. A delay would allow procrastinators even more time to wait to buy coverage — something that neither insurers nor the administration want — but it would also mean that any positive Obamacare word-of-mouth stories would probably be pushed back, too.

The delay effort gained momentum when Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H) said this week that Americans need more time to learn about the law and its options and to sign up. On Friday, many of the other Democrats facing voters in 2014 signed on: Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mark Udall of Colorado, and Tom Udall of New Mexico, among others. They released a letter outlining their request before HHS announced the late November timeline.

Separately, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has called to delay the individual mandate for a whole year. That’s considered much more aggressive than extending the open enrollment period. But it’s much more politically popular with Republicans who are eager to delay or defund any piece of the law.

Lawmakers could have to weigh in soon. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton said on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” on Friday that the House is considering a vote on a bill to delay the enrollment period.

“Since we had our hearing, … there’s a number of members — Republican and Democrat — that are calling for a further delay in terms of signing things up,” Upton said. “We’re going to take a good look at that, and we’ll see where we are, maybe having some announcement next week or so, maybe a little longer than that.”